WASHINGTON — A former Dyess Air Force Base commander said he's not surprised the president's 2013 budget calls for two new rounds of base realignment and closure.

The Department of Defense rolled out a budget Monday proposing a round of Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) in 2013 and another one in 2015 as the Pentagon seeks to make about $487 billion in cuts mandated for over the next 10 years.

"We've always been concerned there would be more rounds of BRAC," Bill Ehrie, president of the Abilene Industrial Development Foundation, said. "We are preparing as we always prepare."

The last round of BRAC was in 2005, but there was talk of a 2003 round then, too.

Officials didn't have enough time to launch a 2003 round, Ehrie said.

BRAC is complicated, so if it does go forward, it might not be until 2015.

The budget unveiled Monday supports President Obama's new military strategy.

It creates a leaner force structure while focusing on the Asia-Pacific region. The B-1Bs and C-130s assigned to Dyess are considered key to a stronger Asia-Pacific presence for the U.S. military with an eye toward threats from North Korea and China.

The new budget does not appear to make additional cuts to the B-1 fleet, already mandated to shrink by six bombers over the next five years. Dyess is home to 40 B-1s and is expected to lose four in the cuts.

But the base is to receive about $4 million in C-130J flight simulator funding in the budget.

The budget also sets aside $300 million in fiscal year 2013 for a next-generation bomber to replace the B-1 in approximately 10 years.

From 2013 to fiscal year 2017, the Department of Defense proposes investing $6.3 billion in the new bomber's development.

The average cost per aircraft is estimated to be $550 million.

Does Abilene Rep. Randy Neugebauer support another round of BRAC?

"While there is always discussion about BRAC as security threats change and we adapt our military to meet those threats, Dyess AFB has been on the front line of our efforts in fighting the global war on terrorism," Neugebauer, a Republican from Lubbock said. "And I expect that to continue into the future."

Big Country Rep. Mac Thornberry said he does not support a new round of BRAC.

The last Government Accountability Office study that he saw showed the 2005 round of BRAC will not break even until 2018, said Thornberry, vice chairman of the House Armed Services Committee.

"The idea that we would do something now that would make a significant difference on the military budget is ridiculous," Thornberry, a Republican from Clarendon, said in a previous interview.

Thornberry said he doesn't think there will be much appetite in Congress for another round of BRAC.

Thornberry and Big Country Rep. Mike Conaway, an Armed Services Committee member, could not be reached Monday for comment.

But Conaway told The Hill, a newspaper based in Washington, that he expected Republicans to oppose the president on some defense cuts.

"I can't imagine that many of us on our side of the aisle are going to agree with the president's priorities," he said in an article published in late January.

Department of Defense Comptroller Robert Hale said the upfront costs of the 2005 round were about $35 billion, and the estimated savings — in perpetuity — will be $5 billion annually.

The defense budget released Monday does not provide for savings or costs from more rounds of BRAC, Hale said during a news conference Monday.

Defense budget officials are waiting for authorization before doing that, and they also need more detail from the services about how they're going to make cuts in manpower, he said.

The call for BRAC is tied to cuts of more than 100,000 active-duty personnel, mostly from ground forces. Pentagon officials contend the two rounds of BRAC will align the base structure with the new force structure.

The DOD has about 990 square feet of facilities for each active-duty and civilian worker, Todd Harrison, a defense analyst for Center for Strategic Budgetary Assessments, said in a brief released Monday.

The cuts in manpower mean the department will have to shutter approximately 102 million square feet of facilities, an area about three times the size of Fort Hood, Texas, to maintain today's ratio of facilities to personnel, Harrison said.

He added that closing bases costs money — not provided in the new budget.

The approximately $487 billion of military funding cuts were part of a deal Congress reached last year to raise the debt ceiling and avert a government shutdown.

For the 2013 budget year, the Air Force budget falls from $144.9 billion this year to $140.1 billion.

Unless lawmakers act by January 2013, defense will suffer another $500 billion in military cuts as part of sequester.

"It would be a sort of meat-ax approach," Hale said. "It won't be nice. We would end up disrupting a lot of programs."